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Installing BATTS consists of five steps: installing BATTS' prerequisites; modifying and installing the configuration files; creating the database; installing the scripts; and installing the mail gateway.
If you are familiar with Unix or Linux systems, BATTS should be relatively easy to install. These instructions were written based on installation of BATTS on a Red Hat 7.1 system, though other Unix systems should be rather similar. BATTS has never been installed on a Windows system. I doubt that it would run out-of-the-box on any Windows system, but if you manage to get it working, please let us know.
In order to function, BATTS needs several other pieces of software installed. These include Perl, MySQL, Sendmail or equivalent, and several Perl Modules. Installation of Perl and MySQL are not trivial; both ship with many modern Linux distributions and, in these cases, the default installation should suffice.
If you are running a Unix system without Perl installed (egads!), Perl may be obtained from www.perl.com. BATTS was developed on a system running Perl 5.6.0; Any version of Perl greater than 5 should probably work, but nothing else has been tested. If you are successfully running BATTS on a system with a different version of Perl, or if you have found a version of Perl incompatible with BATTS, please send me mail at <jon@cluestickconsulting.com> so that future releases of this manual can be kept up-to-date.
MySQL is available from www.mysql.com. Red Hat 7.1 includes version 3.23.36; this is the version of MySQL that BATTS has been developed and tested with. Any version greater than 3.23.0 should work; if you are successfully running BATTS with a different version of MySQL, or you have discovered that BATTS is incompatible with a particular version of MySQL, please send e-mail and let me know.
Virtually every Unix and Linux distribution comes with either genuine Sendmail or a substitute that contains a binary named (or symbolically linked to) sendmail. As long as it accepts standard Sendmail options, we don't really care if it's the real thing. [1] If you are using something other than stock Sendmail and needed to make changes in order to make it work, please send me mail. (Are you noticing a pattern here?)
In order to work, BATTS needs the Perl DBI (Database Interface) module and the DBD (Database Driver) module for MySQL installed. In addition, the Mail::Header and Mail::Internet modules from the MailTools package are required.
The DBI home page is located at http://dbi.symbolstone.org/. Complete instructions for installing DBI and DBD may be found there. Red Hat Linux and some other Linux distributions include packages of the DBI and DBD modules. Red Hat's packages are named perl-DBI and perl-DBD-MySQL; they are available as part of the base Red Hat distribution for versions 7.0 and later.
If these modules are not already installed on your system, they can be installed via CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. You can enter the CPAN shell by running the command perl -MCPAN -e shell \; as root. You will be asked a number of questions regarding the installation of CPAN. Answer these as best you can.
Eventually you will arrive at the CPAN shell prompt, which is simply a line that begins with the word cpan> followed by the cursor. DBI and DBD are available as bundles, which are essentially a group of separate modules. To install the DBD bundle, type install Bundle::DBD at the CPAN prompt and hit Enter. The DBI may be installed in the same fashion; not surprisingly, it is named Bundle::DBI.
After installing these modules, you can install the Mail::Header and Mail::Internet modules in the same fashion. There does not appear to be a MailTools bundle, though it should not be difficult to install the entire MailTools package via CPAN.
If all of these commands worked, you have installed all of the prerequisites for BATTS. Congratulations!
| [1] | It is, only inside out! |
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